Being a Heresy fan, I couldn’t not purchase a set of Burning of Prospero at launch. As I strongly suspect is the case for most people, as much as I like the background to the game, I don’t have any intention to use the figures for the game and instead will use the Mark III Marines as the basis for a new army instead.

I’m pretty heavily committed to the side of the Traitors and I used my Calth set to add to a small Word Bearer force (intending them to be allies for my Warp Cult Milita or for a Dark Compliance hybrid list) and also for a small foot only Alpha Legion force for Heresy Kill Team / Tactical Strike games. That said, I don’t really fancy using my BoP set to extend either of those armies and so instead I started to mull over which of the other Traitor Legions the Mark II armour would suit:

Thousand Sons would be the natural choice, but I’d rather hold off on the release of their Heresy Rules before committing to building a force – I have found it much easier this year to get motivated around writing a list for a specific event in mind in order to keep focused and on target with my hobbying. Since we probably won’t see the FW Inferno release until next year now that rules them out until then. Also I have way too many armies which are tied into variations on red colour schemes already (Imperial Knights, 40K Fleshtearers, 30k Word Bearers and Warp Cult) so would be good to do something as a contrast.

Deathguard would also be a good choice for the Mark III aesthetic, and I could probably adapt some of my 40k Plague Marine painting approach to get a reasonably effective quick paint scheme. That said, I fancy painting something in a new style.

So that leads me to Iron Warriors which should be a good contrast colour scheme to my other armies and should be a perfect fit to the ‘grimdustiral’ Mark III armour look. Having learned my lesson from previous hobby experiences gone awry, I decided to do a few tester models before diving in and part painting 30 marines and then deciding my colour scheme isn’t working and having to strip everything.

Since I have a fairly extensive hoard of left over bits Forge World Mark IV/V, Chaos Marine and 3rd party kits, I decided to knock up some tester figures to try out a basic colour scheme before diving into assembling the Prospero set:

I quite like the ‘ghetto’ Mark V look of mixing together the different disparate bits and the colour scheme is pretty simple and quick to do (bonus!). My hazard stripe painting will need some finessing, but I can live with that.

Overall I think it works sufficiently well I might try to scavenge enough similar bits to make a 10 in the same style for use as a squad of veterans now before making a start on BoP.

The recipe for this colour scheme is:

Undercoat with GW Chaos Black Spray.

Basecoat with GW Leadbelcher.

Pick out piping & some armour join connectors with Balthasar Gold.

Wash entire model with Nuln Oil.

Wash entire model with Agarax Earthshade.

Sponge highlight entire model with Ironbreaker.

Do gold trim again with Balthasar Gold and then layer with Gehenna Gold, before washing with Agrax Earthshade to blend in.

Do pauldrons either Abaddon Black or stripe with Averland Sunset.

Sponge pauldrons with Skavenblight Dinge over hazard stripes to give the impression of chipping.